Infegy Blog

Microblogging is becoming more and more popular and much of its success can be contributed to Twitter, a service that has proven to be a powerhouse as its growth continues to explode. But, as with any concept that catches on, there are bound to be contenders who attempt to do it better. Who are these competitors and are they up to the challenge to take on the microblogging champion? We decided to do a little research with Social Radar.

Below is a chart to show chatter over the last 90 days of the big Twitter contenders (Plurk, Brightkite, Pownce, and Jaiku).

From the chart above, it shows that Jaiku has a small lead on these other services. Jaiku is a very similar service to Twitter, and with the recent announcement of a Google partnership, it has a strong recipe for success. However, not far behind Jaiku is Pownce. That’s no surprise, as the Digg.com founder, Kevin Rose was a creator of Pownce, which has helped lead to some easy conversions. However, as we dug in a little deeper, we noticed something interesting. Plurk, a service very similar to Twitter which offers some additional features such as an interactive timeline and “karma”, a number that correlates to your post activity and friends, has been generating a lot of buzz over the past week or so.

Due to Twitter’s recent lack of functionality and constant downtime, complaints have been swarming around the community and has caused many to look elsewhere to fulfill their microblogging desires. As of just this last week, there has been substantially more Plurk chatter than any of the 3 other services combined.

Will this trend continue? It’s hard to say. But, this certainly means that Plurk has a real shot at being the prevailing contender over the next few months.

To view this post in a feed reader go to the RSS feed